Sooo I watched Oppenheimer and got really into atomic bombs last week lol Just a lil break from tornadoes and severe weather. Don't worry though as "Rare Tornadoes in Unlikely Locations" is coming out next week! I also have a few hurricane videos I'm working on :) Thanks for watching!
So long as you dont get a bunch of facts wrong you’ll be ok. That being said, please note that 1,000x the yield does not mean the explosion is 1,000x bigger.
The underground test at 17:50 really shows you the power of nuclear explosions, the whole ground moved like a wave. The force required to do that is just utter insanity.
Also 8:56. The cameraman really captures how insanely bright and massive that explosion was. You can even see the radiation damage the film near and shortly after the explosion! It’s a ball of plasma as large as a city!
Being a North Dakotan my favorite piece of trivia that I bring to any nuclear bomb conversation is that at one point during the cold war North Dakota was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world behind the US and the Soviets. Obviously we are part of the US, but it just gives you context as to how many nuclear missiles the US had if just one state had seceded and how little the rest of the world had.
Btw I never really understood why the Midwest. By the time they had icbms, being in the continental interior wouldn’t be any better than anywhere else, why not put all the silos in Alaska? They instead ensured our agricultural core would be annihilated and chilled under a debris cloud from everything burning, and then all that junk would drift east on the winds as if the east coast wouldn’t be screwed enough, and nowhere for anyone to run to escape the west to east dispersion of radiation. If we had them in Alaska, they’d have to nuke both to destroy both, and farmland doesn’t generally rank as a target worth a nuke iirc.
@@fromthefire4176 I had the same question when I first heard about it. The only explanation that I have found was about keeping the nukes away from high population areas, but my next thought was ND's agricultural importance and it would ruin that for 100's of years. I thought about Alaska and wondered about weather and maybe its harder to keep nukes there? Though ND also has harsh winters. My own theory is that nobody really thinks ND is any threat and most people don't even know it exists and therefore they hoped they were safe haha.
@@eastvilleholdingscorporate7881 To be completely honest, it is really annoying that whole thing happened and exists. Thanks for annoying me with that info.
As you briefly mentioned, the Tsar Bomba was supposed to yield at least 100mt, but the scientists worried it might cause irreversible planetary effects. They still made it, but fortunately never used it. They had also sketched the idea of an even more powerful one than the 100mt one, but scrapped the idea after Tsar Bomba was tested.
They decided anything over 100mt was pointless as the explosion would not wrap around the curvature of the earth, so above 100mt you would just be launching debris further into space rather than destroying more targets.
My grandfather worked on operation Castle. I still have the pictures he took of the bomb tests. He said that no one was expecting any of them to be as big as they were. When they tested the bombs, he was wearing a ballcap. He was told to turn it backwards to protect his neck from radioactive fallout. It did protect his neck, but the little rectangular hole in the back of the cap made him get a radiation burn on his forehead.
Castle Bravo is my favorite nuclear bomb ever. It's the real life Godzilla, yes Ishiro Honda was flying in a plane over the Pacific ocean when he looked out his window and saw Castle Bravo explode. Castle Bravo is Godzilla
12:02 The soldier wasn't simply "below" per se. He was in a trench dug about 30 kilometres from the point of burst, to give you an idea of how powerful 1.6 megatons is
@@mazzae6084 They scaled down the blast to 1.6 megatons from the device’s 3.2 megaton rating in order to better ensure the safety of the observers. It still wound up causing 2 casualties. One was 70 kilometres away when a roof collapsed in Kurchatov. It should be noted the device detonated in a weather inversion which reflected a lot of the shockwave that would have blown upwards into space back down to earth. The shockwave was much stronger than predicted as a result. They didn’t know how a weather inversion would amplify the shock fronts
There was also the Vela Incident in 1979 where a US satellite caught evidence of a believed atmospheric nuclear test by Israel and South Africa. It's a little bit of nuclear intrigue that continues to this day as neither Israel nor South Africa has admitted to carrying out the test and Israel has never even admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, even though it almost certainly does.
My Grandfather back in the day when Estonia was still in the Soviet Union was one of the guys who worked on a atomic bomb delivery system. He told a story of seeing it once, once only. How he described it was " I hope hell does not look like that "
My father was in the Army at Trinity as part of the Photography and Spectography group. Not only did they not know how large the blast would actually be, but they didn't know if they'd even be able to _see_ the blast in the darkness. There are photos of my father working on the flash bomb array to illuminate the test. Some of the flash bombs were duds, but it didn't matter since people in outlying areas thought the sun rose at 5:29 am that morning. Officials put out a story in the papers that a munitions depot had exploded. The project's existence was finally revealed after Hiroshima was bombed.
11:54 The footage of RDS-37 is absolutely spectacular. The fact that there was a casualty at 70+ kilometres from the hypocentre AND that the device was at half power is wild
Fun fact 1: When the Tsar Bomba was detonated, windows in Finland over 500 miles away shattered (maybe 600, but I couldn't remember with 100% confidence off the top of my head). Fun fact 2: The seismological shockwave from the Tsar Bomba went around the world 3 times.
Fun fact 3: The bomb was dropped with a parachute attached to it, so that way the bomber and its crew can fly away from it and be safe enough to not immediately implode. When the bomb detonated, the plane shook so violently that the pilot said: “well. Buckle up. I’m not confident we are making it, and we’ll be in the records as the people to die to the biggest bomb in the world.”
@@madfluffyfox8739 Fun fact 4 that I can't remember if it was mentioned in the video because I'm not re-watching it: The bomb's original yield was projected to be 100 megatons, but the Soviets decided to reduce this by ~50% for the test, as they did not believe it would be possible for the bomber crew to escape the blast at full yield.
The blast damage goes up by a factor of 2/3 for doubling the yield. This means a bomb with twice the yield of another bomb only creates 1.6 times more blast damage. It's still a lot of damage, but the point is that the damage doesn't follow a linear increase in the yield.
What do you mean by damage? Are you talking about the blast radius? The energy decreases by 1/distance cubed as it spreads. Where did you get the 2/3 number from? I would like to read about it.
Great video and very informative! One thing that I think worth mentioning is that while the Trinity site and the marshall islands were less populated, at least by US citizens, indigenous people groups still lived there and were often not given warning that atomic and radiological tests were being done. Many of these communities are still impacted by the residual fallout and radiation produced by these tests, and the government has generally tried to cover up the crimes they did to these people.
The US and Russians with the atomic bomb have killed the ozone layer and killed our chances of having a north and south pole in 80 years. Humanity may very well die because of their stupidity and their obsession with blowing things up and not giving a damn about marine or artic life. I am absolutely floored when I look a the data and realize they have utterly left us hopeless.
Actually, the castle Bravo was expected to be 5mt, but some reaction with the lithium that the bomb contained made it an explosion of 15mt, due to this, everyone was (relatively) super close to the explosion. One soldier on a carrier said that "he had seen hell on earth" and the pilot stated that he could see through his hands (the bones) like an x-ray. Hope you enjoyed this fun facts😊 BTW amazing video.
Operation Plumbbob was also noteworthy for (in theory) sending a specialized heavy manhole cover into space. Although we don't know for certain, the math suggests the cover more than likely made it off of the planet, making it one of the first man-made objects to escape Earth.
Really? I guess there is some emphasis on "specialized" because I'm thinking anything close enough to the bomb to be blasted far enough and fast enough to leave Earth's gravity would also be close enough to just be completely vaporized instead of remaining intact.
@@TH3C001 Just going from what I remember off the top of my head, yes, it was heavily reinforced. Not just a typical sewer cover, more like a specially made chunk of alloy that just so happened to resemble a manhole cover.
My grandad was a Royal Engineer working on christmas island when the bombs were dropped. He told me stories on how they used to watch the bombs detonate in shorts sandles and sunglasses. He is still alive today and is finally getting a medal for his work at the time!
as someone who moved to yukon a few months back the fact you used OKC to demonstrate the blast radius really helps put it into perspective for me. yukon is about 25 minutes west of the city and it’s very comforting to know if russia ever randomly decided to throw a tsar bomba at OKC i would be immediately vaporized in the fireball
@@cristinkapteina9485his uncle could have a different father. My dad and his brothers have different dads. I’m not going to call my uncles father grandfather when in fact he’s not my grandfather
The soviets also conducted a live ICBM test in 1962 over Novaya Zemlya (a.k.a. "Test 219") with a yield of around 24 Megatons - actually the second most powerful nuclear explosion in history.
@@andruzznaist.n.g5135 There is very little information about that particular test in general and no released footage that I know of. I presume live ICBM tests are treated with a little extra dose of secrecy
@@falkpetersencould be that they faked it to spread false info to American spies, so that the US government would panic because they would think that the Russians somehow had better technology… just to find out that it’s junk with a good looking shell. The reason I say that is because they did the same with the MIG-23 (I believe) but when a soviet crash landed on a US base and they studied it, they found out how bad it was. And their “invisible/unstoppable” hypersonic missile (I believe the kinzhal) gets shot down every time by the US Patriot missile… I’m so glad that my country (the Netherlands) has a good relationship with US arms manufacturers, because we also use them for our defense system.
I am watching the video from Japan. As a Japanese born in a nuclear-bombed country, I was a little curious about nuclear weapons and watched the video to learn how much nuclear testing the U.S. conducted during the Cold War. I have personally heard that China has nuclear weapons, but I have never seen any footage of China's nuclear weapons or nuclear tests, so I had my doubts about whether China really has nuclear weapons or not. I am very afraid of the threat of nuclear weapons being so close to me as I live in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, thinking about the Taiwan contingency.
I'm in the US, and most people here regret the atomic bombing and wish we hadn't done it. People argue about it on the internet, but in real life people do feel bad about it. I learned about what happened to Hiroshima when I was a kid in school. I am so glad Hiroshima was rebuilt and is doing well today.
As an American I honestly don’t regret that we dropped the nuclear bombs. Yes killing is bad. But it was either drop the nukes killing a couple hundred thousand OR implement a land invasion killing anywhere from 5 to 10 million Japanese citizens and ravaging a very large percentage of the Japanese countryside and remaining cities (remember dozens of cities had already been firebombed, in fact the fire bombs were far more worse than the nukes). Only those who don’t truly understand the gravity of the situation and events that would have happened(and nearly did) would say the nukes shouldn’t have been dropped.
Politics played a part as well. Stalin had agreed at the Potsdam Conference to bring the Soviet Union into the war against Japan 3 months after VE Day (August 8th) which he did. I think that Truman wanted to get a surrender out of Japan before that date and was hoping that the atomic bomb (Hiroshima) would do it.@@nutterbuttergutter Japan had a non-agression pact with the Soviet Union at the time and was putting out peace feelers through them (or trying to do so). When the Soviets attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria on August 8th they knew that that option was then closed. That's the way I understand it anyway.
I do not regret the 2 Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, If Japan would have won, we would have all been prosecuted for war crimes, Never forget what the Japanese do to prisoners ! I've been living under the threat of nuclear war for 63 year's, don't worry about it!☮️🇺🇸
it's really kinda crazy how nukes have only seen use in war against one single adversary for one reason and then never used again. i feel like that was such a massive turning point in human history. just the dropping of a couple big bombs. it's really hard to describe the feeling i am feeling while thinking about it.
And what pisses me off is our government(USA) has wasted BILLIONS of our hard earned tax dollars to essentially light giant fireworks because it looks cool😒
Yeah. It’s really like the world saw what they could do and said Nope. It was an unfortunate time, but what they did to us at PH was unfortunate as well. We had to establish that this needs to end now, and we did and Atomic warfare was never used again.
We nuked Japan as a show of force because we thought we'd be the only country to possess the capabilities. Nuclear proliferation has arguably saved the world. If everyone is afraid of nuclear annihilation, no one will use the bombs again. Until we develop a weapon that's more destructive and world ending, the cold war limbo will last forever.
3:50 Despite how dramatic the film was. The blast didn't do as much damage as one would suspect. The flat top next to the explosion was USS Saratoga. She was towed away and couldn't be decontaminated so she was sank. Behind her is the small ship the bomb was attached too. Behind her is Arkansas, she sank. The closer one behind her is the Japanese Nagato, After the explosion she would begin to tilt an sink. The german prinz Eugen is just out of shot, a leak formed and she sank as it was to dangerous to repair her. I think you can also see Pennsylvania the sister ship of the Arizona. USS Nevada was one of the oldest there and took multiple shots and she survived. She was later used as practice for the Iowa and survived. She was then torpedoes on target. USS Laffey has a storied history, survived the blasts and continued to serve the us. You can visit her today in South Carolina.
Wasn’t Sister Sara like the largest ship at the test? Cus most of the larger ships I knew there were older dreadnoughts and Sara was 888’ along with Lady Lex, they were longest ship in the navy until the Iowas were built, but they were 887’, the last one (I think) New Jersey was 888’
An interesting thing about operation fishbowl, shot Prime, is that it created temporary radiation rings around Earth and knocked out a few satellites! It also knocked out electrical grids and phone lines in Hawaii, hundreds of miles away but in direct line of sight to the EMP. Also, on the opposite side of the earth, the radiation rings raced across the magnetic field and a brief red aurora showed as the fallout ionized the upper atmosphere. Definitely one of the most interesting tests.
The yield of the first soviet fusion bomb wasn’t big, but they improved on the transportability. The first fusion bomb they tested in US was basically a large plant with all kinds of devices to make it work.
Thermonuclear doesn’t just utilise fusion, it utilises fusion to boost a fission reaction and create a loop because the fission reaction increases the fusion reaction and vice versa, hence higher blast yields.
Yeah, with the "invention" of a neutron generator to increase the fission -> fusion -> fission -> fusion -> fisson reaction even more, you have hell on earth. Just as a side note: Having fast supercomputers and simulate the stuff also helped to not test every concept live anymore.
Great video! What I miss are the 1962 soviet nuclear tests which included four blasts exceeding the Castle Bravo. These were, in chronogical order: Test 147 on August 5th 1962 at 21.1 Mt Test 173 on September 25th 1962 at 19.1 Mt Test 174 on September 27th 1962 at 20.0 Mt Test 219 on December 24th 1962 at 24.4 Mt Also they were, after the Tsar Bomba the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th largest nuclear tests by yield ever conducted!
Couple things: 1. It is generally agreed upon that South Africa did an atmospheric test with the "Vela Incident" in 1979. 2. I'm surprised you didn't mention the tests performed in Mississippi at the Salmon Site 3. Contiguous
Really great video, im someone who has been pretty interested in Nuclear weapons and/or radioactive chemistry overall and while i did knew about most of the cases here, i have to appreciate that this video contains the exact amount of information about the nuclear testing itself while not being too long, perfect for the casual and specialized viewer, even going a little bit deeper than Peter Kuran documentaries (and keep in mind that Kuran documentaries such as Trinity and Beyond or Atomic Journeys are well known pieces about nuclear testing)
9:47 Upshot-Knothole would be of particular note for testing the precursor wave phenomenon that I talked about in your strongest winds video. Grable shot was a much lower yield than Encore but the precursor caused much more damage to drag-sensitive targets due to the sustained winds not unlike that of a tornado.
@@superskullmaster Yup, watched stuff like Scott Manley's "Going Nuclear", read up on the test operations on Wikipedia and even found some films of test operations.
Very well done video. The 1954 Nevada test site tests are notable because the John Wayne film The Conqueror (about Ghegis Khan) was filmed not far from the testing area. Officials told the movie people that it was safe to film there. However there was a great deal of contaminated soil from the fallout, which was stirred up by the horses, wind and vehicles. This would prove to be tragic. Of the 220 cast and crew 91 would develop some form of cancer and of those 45 succumbed. BTW, Grable is pronounced Gray bul, named after the actress/dancer/singer Betty Grable who was a popular Pin up girl during WW2. Also you referred to the continuous United States, I think the word you were looking for is contiguous
Wikipedia says that the "Dirty Harry" shot of Upshot-Knothole may have been the biggest contributer due to the test's extremely high fallout deposition
Your videos are the absolute best. Thank you so much for making them, they have helped me through some pretty bad anxiety attacks, including tonight. So thank you, you are appreciated. ❤.
===== Daniel 2 :44 “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever, =====
I like to interpret this not as a "in hindsight, this was a bad move", but as "whoops, we've accidentally split an atom. Oops, we just smashed 2 together! Silly us!" 😂
I beg to differ. Same year nuclear weapons were put to use we ended probably the largest folly yet: WW2. Where 50-56 million died from conflict and an additional 20-28 million died from famine and disease. 70+ million died over a course of ~9 years (starting with Sino-Japenese war in '36) and to this day we have yet to see such barbarism. Why? Its not like society has become any less capable of militarizing itself should it come to total war. In fact, the government (at least the US) continuously plans for rapid militarization of industries that could be considered 'dual use'. That is, what is producing motors for washing machines now could be building motors for mechanized Gatling guns tomorrow should the government mandate so. All in all, we could wage a far more devastating war should nuclear weapons not make starting it moot to begin with.
I'm glad you chose OKC for showing nuke sizes. Really lets me get an idea of how big these things are as an Oklahoman. Seems I'd be relatively safe if the city got hit, and same with Dallas, but if they go for the ammunition plant up around McAlester I'd need to take shelter.
If you anywhere near a nuclear explosion, you're in trouble. It doesn't matter if you're affected by the blast damage or not, the radiation still can, and will kill you if you're exposed
very nice pivot from the meteorological type videos. I'd be very interested on what other types of science videos you can come up with relating to quantum mechanics and maybe even physics in the future
Fun fact about Crossroads- here, at 3:43, you can see a battleship here, named the USS Nevada. Despite being close to both blasts, Able and Baker, she survived both of them, and if memory serves correct, she was the closest to Baker to actually survive. Two years later, she was towed out for target practice for the USS Iowa, one of the most advanced and well armed battleships of the time and 4 other unnamed ships, where for 5 days she was shelled and survived, before a torpedo finally finished the job. What is semi-ironic about this event is Nevada already earned the nickname of the "Unsinkable Battleship" because she was the first US warship to take a hit and survived Pearl Harbor. I'd highly recommend for anyone to check out the history of this ship, as it's very cool.
An honorable mention would have to be Project A119. Even though it was never carried out, it was so insane it would still deserve to be mentioned, as it was when the US government went to the Air Force to ask how they should respond to the fact that the Soviets were far ahead of us at that point in the space race and it was looking like the USSR would beat the US to the moon, and the USAF's response was "let's nuke the moon and make a mushroom cloud and crater big enough to be seen on earth."
18:10 fun fact….. This was possible because of the progress made in Soviet & US relations during the Rocky vs Ivan Drago tension and subsequent fight in 1985. Much progress was made during this period, paving the way for a joint venture of this magnitude. Athletics once again bringing nations together.
Great video, you did an amazing job putting these together in a neat timeline! However, small knit pick I can't help but make a note of: The Davy Crockett is not a rocket launcher, nor is it handheld. In the photos, you can see the tripod it was fired from, although it was intended to be, to some extent, man-portable. The differences between a rocket launcher and a recoilless rifle can be summed up in saying that in a rocket launcher, the projectile is accelerated by a rocket that burns until its fuel runs out, but in a recoilless rifle, the propelling force comes from a single detonation, like that of a traditional firearm. The reason it's "recoilless" is the case of the propelling charge is perforated and the back of the weapon is open, allowing some of the gasses to vent out the back and, in theory, giving an equal and opposite reaction to the recoil force generated by the firing of the warhead/payload.
The propellant is never detonated, at least not on purpose. The combustion in the rifle may be much faster but it is still subsonic. Supersonic detonation would destroy the launcher or rifle
@3:45 there's cameras views out there shot in slow motion where(if viewed at a slow enough speed)you can literally watch that ship lift,bow,break,melt,and then evaporate.
Humanity has so much potential and yet it’s heading towards such a dark and tragic direction. Imagine how many real problems can be solved how many lives can be improved and saved just by the funding alone they spent on atomic weapons
Really happy to see someone else highlight the British nuclear program during the 50s. The nuclear testing history conversation is absolutely dominated by the American and Soviet operations. Rarely is the spotlight on Hurricane, Totem, or even Grapple, despite these test series being equally as fascinating as the heavyweights like Castle or Joe-111. The same goes for the French and Chinese.
For sure. My great uncle was fleet air arm. He was present at one of the British nuclear tests. Died a couple of years ago, never got to ask him more sadly
yes so cool, nukes baby, let's blast that shit until we all die. Why is everyone in this comment section so thrilled and chill about this subject.. This shit is horrible
Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by venomous snakes or big cats? Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by tornadoes or volcanic eruptions? Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by black holes or supernovae? No one is denying that nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are dangerous, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone here that would support their use in war, or hell even in another test. However, just as with all dangerous phenomena, a nuclear detonation is an incredibly sobering sight and carries with it an intrinsic beauty in its visual appearance, scale, and raw energy release. Even without that, merely from a physical engineering perspective, the individual devices are feats of their own and have a history ripe for studying. Reading through the methods in which engineers and physicists overcame hurdles, like going from the liquid deuterium TX-16 for Ivy Mike to combining deuterium and lithium for the solid TX-21 for Castle bravo to reduce weight, is just a fascinating experience. Is it so hard to understand, then, why people may find nuclear weapons history just a little interesting? I mean shit, some people even have PhDs in it.
@@RojoFern And do you think testing nukes here on earth for 70 years like pathetic little kids blowing up shit hasn't affected the conditions at all and won't affect us in the future? Even in this video the guy says "oh, and this test killed 3 people". Nearly every test was controversial and not only for science's sake. Fuck that science and engineering if it means our end. Putin is close to losing his war in Ukraine, what do you think happens next? We should've never got this power.. we don't deserve it.
US: “surrender now” Japan: “suck on deez” US: *drops the sun and hundreds of thousands perish instantly* Japan: “understandable, I now wish to surrender”
Just to put this out there, thermonuclear weapons weren’t ridiculously more powerful because of the fusion. As they were designed the fusion reaction caused fast fissioning in the uranium parts that normally don’t fission. So think of a typical thermonuclear weapon as fission-fusion-fission. In theory of course you can add as much fusion fuel as you want for that stage and make a bomb the size of a aircraft carrier.
Right at the end of atmospheric testing, US scientists developed a revolutionary new kind of ultra-high yield thermonuclear device called Ripple. It didn't use the fission third stage and was very clean. Beyond that, the yield-to-weight ratio was predicted to be much higher than conventional thermonuclear weapons. In the Housatonic test that was almost 10 megatons, over 99% of the energy was from fusion and therefore "clean". Because of the end of atmospheric testing and the lack of need for super high yield warheads, the weapon design was never put into production.
@@bella_ciao4608 Yes, it was extremely clean since almost all the energy came from fusion and not fission. It's fission that causes the vast majority of radioactive fallout.
7:46 it's interesting that it took us this long to get our first nuke when we started the research that led to the nuclear bomb and the seppos kept it from us despite it being a collaborative effort.
Ahh, I see that the interest overlap between tornadoes and nukes isn't only in my brain 😆 big, superlatively powerful, scary things. Thanks for another great video!
You forgot to mention that Castle-Bravo was accidentally 15 megatons 😂 that's the worst part of it. Honestly, Castle-Bravo is the craziest one and the most terrifying to me. Watching that explosion is truly the stuff of nightmares.
For anyone interested in the yield of Little Feller 1, the smallest nuclear bomb, a brief excerpt from Wikipedia: "In Little Feller I (July 17), the warhead was launched as a Davy Crockett device from a stationary 155 millimeter launcher and set to detonate between 20-40 feet (6.1-12.2 m) above the ground around 1.7 miles (2.7 km) from the launch point, with a yield of 18 tons of TNT (75 GJ)"
The smallest nuclear bomb tested was one by Ted Taylor. It was too small and didn't go off. It was called the Puny Plutonium Bomb, or "P.P. Shot." After the failed test, Enrico Fermi told Ted Taylor, “Now you’re making progress.” “You’ve fired a dud.”
It was Operation Starfish Prime not Starship prime my friend. Awesome video by the way! I got more information here than any other documentary or tv show. Keep up the good work! 👍🏽
One said in an interview not that long ago that he and a bunch of other troops were taking cover from the blast in a trench which had been dug out only a few hundreds of yards from ground zero. They were instructed to close their eyes and put their hands or arms in front of their faces as well, in order to try and block out all light. Detonation occurred, and he recalled that despite having his eyes closed, wearing protective goggles and covering his face with his hands, his vision was filled with light at that moment. He said he experienced something truly unreal: with eyes closed he could make out perfectly the bones in each hand. Apparently the troops were in close enough proximity to the bomb that they were briefly flooded with x-rays. What a crazy thing to experience first hand..
@@SineEyeddid those troops have any troubles with radiation poisoning after the testing? I mean their bodies were flooded by x rays it’d make sense if they had some sort of radiation poisoning
One story worth mentioning is about how India conducted it's nuclear tests in 1990s, even under heavy US sanctions and heavy CIA surveillance. This is an extraordinary story because at that time India had fooled both USA and it's ally Pakistan. The test was also unexpected to Russia, China & UK.
3:19 this may not seem significant until it is pointed out here, but this footage actually holds a lot of weight as evidence for the structure of water having an effect on the it's overall interaction profile with Electromagnetic Radiation, specifically the spectrum of it's transparency/opacity. In this segment of video taken of the Baker test, you will notice that the ocean changes turning black around the detonation site where the water has just come in contact with the compression wave. This denotes the shift in the EM interaction profile as the structure of the water is placed under intense compression. This shift briefly makes the water appear opaque and black, as in this compressed state, higher frequencies of light are being obstructed. This is important because it basically provides video evidence that water (when uncompressed) is opaque in the infra-red and microwave spectrum. This in turn means that water absorbs and re-emits light at those same microwave and infra-red spectrum frequencies, which in turn falsifies any assumptions or theories about the structure of the Universe that are made using Microwave Background Radiation readings taken from ground based observatories as the water content of the atmosphere and the presence of the ocean itself serves to obscure and contaminate the information gathered by the instruments. Do with this information what you will. Just note that this same compression effect on the water can be observed in every underwater nuclear test.
Fun fact (or not so fun): the fireball that an atomic bomb creates is hotter than the sun and vaporizes ANYTHING inside, diamonds, titanium, steel, whatever.
Sooo I watched Oppenheimer and got really into atomic bombs last week lol Just a lil break from tornadoes and severe weather. Don't worry though as "Rare Tornadoes in Unlikely Locations" is coming out next week! I also have a few hurricane videos I'm working on :) Thanks for watching!
honestly one of the best movies i have watched
@@maxbronson204Same. Watched it like 2 hours ago and I’m still shocked
So long as you dont get a bunch of facts wrong you’ll be ok. That being said, please note that 1,000x the yield does not mean the explosion is 1,000x bigger.
SAME !
Saw it yesterday. A very tiring movie, but it was worth it.
The underground test at 17:50 really shows you the power of nuclear explosions, the whole ground moved like a wave. The force required to do that is just utter insanity.
That wasn't even one of the strong bombs either imagine a 50mt explosion underground
@bjek343 well yh but its not anything newr to what we can do and we don't have anything that big in the arsenal cause there's not point
Also 8:56. The cameraman really captures how insanely bright and massive that explosion was. You can even see the radiation damage the film near and shortly after the explosion!
It’s a ball of plasma as large as a city!
@@bjek343 Wtf is level 12 on the Mercalli scale, does that transfer to the Richter scale?
@@mortem4342It's seismic waves measured (Richter) and Mercalli is a twelve point scale based on observed effects.
Being a North Dakotan my favorite piece of trivia that I bring to any nuclear bomb conversation is that at one point during the cold war North Dakota was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world behind the US and the Soviets. Obviously we are part of the US, but it just gives you context as to how many nuclear missiles the US had if just one state had seceded and how little the rest of the world had.
Btw I never really understood why the Midwest. By the time they had icbms, being in the continental interior wouldn’t be any better than anywhere else, why not put all the silos in Alaska? They instead ensured our agricultural core would be annihilated and chilled under a debris cloud from everything burning, and then all that junk would drift east on the winds as if the east coast wouldn’t be screwed enough, and nowhere for anyone to run to escape the west to east dispersion of radiation. If we had them in Alaska, they’d have to nuke both to destroy both, and farmland doesn’t generally rank as a target worth a nuke iirc.
@@fromthefire4176 I had the same question when I first heard about it. The only explanation that I have found was about keeping the nukes away from high population areas, but my next thought was ND's agricultural importance and it would ruin that for 100's of years. I thought about Alaska and wondered about weather and maybe its harder to keep nukes there? Though ND also has harsh winters. My own theory is that nobody really thinks ND is any threat and most people don't even know it exists and therefore they hoped they were safe haha.
@@eastvilleholdingscorporate7881 To be completely honest, it is really annoying that whole thing happened and exists. Thanks for annoying me with that info.
Another person from North Dakota
Hey, I also live in North Dakota! Specifically Minot where they keep most of the nukes I think
As you briefly mentioned, the Tsar Bomba was supposed to yield at least 100mt, but the scientists worried it might cause irreversible planetary effects. They still made it, but fortunately never used it. They had also sketched the idea of an even more powerful one than the 100mt one, but scrapped the idea after Tsar Bomba was tested.
This restored 1% of my faith in humanity
They decided anything over 100mt was pointless as the explosion would not wrap around the curvature of the earth, so above 100mt you would just be launching debris further into space rather than destroying more targets.
The reason was because the additional uranium would spread radiation far enough to prevent further tests at that location.
They reduced its yield to give the pilots delivering it a chance to get away from the blast.
@@mahazroko6753Autonomous Bombers Enter the Atmosphere 🦾🤖🔥☢️💀🏭
My grandfather worked on operation Castle. I still have the pictures he took of the bomb tests. He said that no one was expecting any of them to be as big as they were. When they tested the bombs, he was wearing a ballcap. He was told to turn it backwards to protect his neck from radioactive fallout. It did protect his neck, but the little rectangular hole in the back of the cap made him get a radiation burn on his forehead.
Castle Bravo is my favorite nuclear bomb ever. It's the real life Godzilla, yes Ishiro Honda was flying in a plane over the Pacific ocean when he looked out his window and saw Castle Bravo explode. Castle Bravo is Godzilla
here comes the sun
@@Bobbshandle😂
@@Bobbshandleabbey road
Anyway to see the picture
12:02 The soldier wasn't simply "below" per se. He was in a trench dug about 30 kilometres from the point of burst, to give you an idea of how powerful 1.6 megatons is
Was this for testing purposes?
@@mazzae6084 They scaled down the blast to 1.6 megatons from the device’s 3.2 megaton rating in order to better ensure the safety of the observers. It still wound up causing 2 casualties. One was 70 kilometres away when a roof collapsed in Kurchatov.
It should be noted the device detonated in a weather inversion which reflected a lot of the shockwave that would have blown upwards into space back down to earth. The shockwave was much stronger than predicted as a result. They didn’t know how a weather inversion would amplify the shock fronts
wasnt rds 37 50 mt?
nvm
@@Flight6-Skibdii No, that's the Tsar Bomba you're thinking of.
your channel is gonna blow up no pun intended good stuff man
There was also the Vela Incident in 1979 where a US satellite caught evidence of a believed atmospheric nuclear test by Israel and South Africa. It's a little bit of nuclear intrigue that continues to this day as neither Israel nor South Africa has admitted to carrying out the test and Israel has never even admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, even though it almost certainly does.
and seems taht nobody cares about Israel being that dangerous.. because they rule the world media
Just Israeli things to do...
But I still wonder if we'll ever learn if South Africa had a nuke
Its pretty known that Israel has them and are saying they dont just to say they dont
@mexicanopdb8452 South Africa definitely did, they are also the only nation to ever give up nuclear weapons
@@mexicanopdbWe know South Africa produced nuclear weapons. This isn't controversial.
My Grandfather back in the day when Estonia was still in the Soviet Union was one of the guys who worked on a atomic bomb delivery system. He told a story of seeing it once, once only. How he described it was " I hope hell does not look like that "
Wowwww
That just gives me chills
Jesus loves you!!
Jesus loves you!!@@rifatassyarif7197
Jesus loves you!!@@Elcompalui712
My father was in the Army at Trinity as part of the Photography and Spectography group. Not only did they not know how large the blast would actually be, but they didn't know if they'd even be able to _see_ the blast in the darkness. There are photos of my father working on the flash bomb array to illuminate the test. Some of the flash bombs were duds, but it didn't matter since people in outlying areas thought the sun rose at 5:29 am that morning. Officials put out a story in the papers that a munitions depot had exploded. The project's existence was finally revealed after Hiroshima was bombed.
11:54 The footage of RDS-37 is absolutely spectacular. The fact that there was a casualty at 70+ kilometres from the hypocentre AND that the device was at half power is wild
It’s fake
Fun fact 1: When the Tsar Bomba was detonated, windows in Finland over 500 miles away shattered (maybe 600, but I couldn't remember with 100% confidence off the top of my head).
Fun fact 2: The seismological shockwave from the Tsar Bomba went around the world 3 times.
Fun fact 3: The bomb was dropped with a parachute attached to it, so that way the bomber and its crew can fly away from it and be safe enough to not immediately implode. When the bomb detonated, the plane shook so violently that the pilot said: “well. Buckle up. I’m not confident we are making it, and we’ll be in the records as the people to die to the biggest bomb in the world.”
@@madfluffyfox8739 Fun fact 4 that I can't remember if it was mentioned in the video because I'm not re-watching it: The bomb's original yield was projected to be 100 megatons, but the Soviets decided to reduce this by ~50% for the test, as they did not believe it would be possible for the bomber crew to escape the blast at full yield.
fact 5 nowun cars
aparently a child got in to my YT
@@themcbeehive I sincerely apologize; I reacted quite meanly.
The blast damage goes up by a factor of 2/3 for doubling the yield. This means a bomb with twice the yield of another bomb only creates 1.6 times more blast damage. It's still a lot of damage, but the point is that the damage doesn't follow a linear increase in the yield.
diminishing returns
So multi warheads range from 10kt-500kt on one ICBM is more efficient.
@@tiutran2610 That's also to ensure some warheads make it past air defenses.
I'll be sure to mention that to the person next to me before the blast wave hits us. Positivity!
What do you mean by damage? Are you talking about the blast radius? The energy decreases by 1/distance cubed as it spreads. Where did you get the 2/3 number from? I would like to read about it.
Great video and very informative! One thing that I think worth mentioning is that while the Trinity site and the marshall islands were less populated, at least by US citizens, indigenous people groups still lived there and were often not given warning that atomic and radiological tests were being done. Many of these communities are still impacted by the residual fallout and radiation produced by these tests, and the government has generally tried to cover up the crimes they did to these people.
@OnSquareOnLevel it does suck to have to do your mom every night
Yes! And there’s also a giant concrete well filled with radioactive seawater, which is leaking.
The US and Russians with the atomic bomb have killed the ozone layer and killed our chances of having a north and south pole in 80 years. Humanity may very well die because of their stupidity and their obsession with blowing things up and not giving a damn about marine or artic life. I am absolutely floored when I look a the data and realize they have utterly left us hopeless.
Actually, the castle Bravo was expected to be 5mt, but some reaction with the lithium that the bomb contained made it an explosion of 15mt, due to this, everyone was (relatively) super close to the explosion.
One soldier on a carrier said that "he had seen hell on earth" and the pilot stated that he could see through his hands (the bones) like an x-ray.
Hope you enjoyed this fun facts😊
BTW amazing video.
Operation Plumbbob was also noteworthy for (in theory) sending a specialized heavy manhole cover into space. Although we don't know for certain, the math suggests the cover more than likely made it off of the planet, making it one of the first man-made objects to escape Earth.
It also was the fastest man made object in history join 130,000 miles per hour
It reached a speed of about mach jesus
Really? I guess there is some emphasis on "specialized" because I'm thinking anything close enough to the bomb to be blasted far enough and fast enough to leave Earth's gravity would also be close enough to just be completely vaporized instead of remaining intact.
@@TH3C001 Just going from what I remember off the top of my head, yes, it was heavily reinforced. Not just a typical sewer cover, more like a specially made chunk of alloy that just so happened to resemble a manhole cover.
@@ld_ryan_u That's incredible.
My grandad was a Royal Engineer working on christmas island when the bombs were dropped. He told me stories on how they used to watch the bombs detonate in shorts sandles and sunglasses. He is still alive today and is finally getting a medal for his work at the time!
as someone who moved to yukon a few months back the fact you used OKC to demonstrate the blast radius really helps put it into perspective for me. yukon is about 25 minutes west of the city and it’s very comforting to know if russia ever randomly decided to throw a tsar bomba at OKC i would be immediately vaporized in the fireball
My uncle’s father was one of those soldiers in operation buster jangle, he survived the radiation but died from Covid in 2020
So your grandpa
@@cristinkapteina9485his uncle could have a different father. My dad and his brothers have different dads. I’m not going to call my uncles father grandfather when in fact he’s not my grandfather
They speak of their mother's uncle, the grandfunckle
The soviets also conducted a live ICBM test in 1962 over Novaya Zemlya (a.k.a. "Test 219") with a yield of around 24 Megatons - actually the second most powerful nuclear explosion in history.
Damn, weird that I've never heard of it
Is there any footage online?
@@andruzznaist.n.g5135 There is very little information about that particular test in general and no released footage that I know of. I presume live ICBM tests are treated with a little extra dose of secrecy
@@falkpetersencould be that they faked it to spread false info to American spies, so that the US government would panic because they would think that the Russians somehow had better technology… just to find out that it’s junk with a good looking shell. The reason I say that is because they did the same with the MIG-23 (I believe) but when a soviet crash landed on a US base and they studied it, they found out how bad it was. And their “invisible/unstoppable” hypersonic missile (I believe the kinzhal) gets shot down every time by the US Patriot missile… I’m so glad that my country (the Netherlands) has a good relationship with US arms manufacturers, because we also use them for our defense system.
@@falkpetersenthat wasn’t a real test 😂😂
I am watching the video from Japan.
As a Japanese born in a nuclear-bombed country, I was a little curious about nuclear weapons and watched the video to learn how much nuclear testing the U.S. conducted during the Cold War.
I have personally heard that China has nuclear weapons, but I have never seen any footage of China's nuclear weapons or nuclear tests, so I had my doubts about whether China really has nuclear weapons or not.
I am very afraid of the threat of nuclear weapons being so close to me as I live in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, thinking about the Taiwan contingency.
I'm in the US, and most people here regret the atomic bombing and wish we hadn't done it. People argue about it on the internet, but in real life people do feel bad about it. I learned about what happened to Hiroshima when I was a kid in school. I am so glad Hiroshima was rebuilt and is doing well today.
As an American I honestly don’t regret that we dropped the nuclear bombs. Yes killing is bad. But it was either drop the nukes killing a couple hundred thousand OR implement a land invasion killing anywhere from 5 to 10 million Japanese citizens and ravaging a very large percentage of the Japanese countryside and remaining cities (remember dozens of cities had already been firebombed, in fact the fire bombs were far more worse than the nukes). Only those who don’t truly understand the gravity of the situation and events that would have happened(and nearly did) would say the nukes shouldn’t have been dropped.
Politics played a part as well. Stalin had agreed at the Potsdam Conference to bring the Soviet Union into the war against Japan 3 months after VE Day (August 8th) which he did. I think that Truman wanted to get a surrender out of Japan before that date and was hoping that the atomic bomb (Hiroshima) would do it.@@nutterbuttergutter Japan had a non-agression pact with the Soviet Union at the time and was putting out peace feelers through them (or trying to do so). When the Soviets attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria on August 8th they knew that that option was then closed. That's the way I understand it anyway.
I do not regret the 2 Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, If Japan would have won, we would have all been prosecuted for war crimes, Never forget what the Japanese do to prisoners ! I've been living under the threat of nuclear war for 63 year's, don't worry about it!☮️🇺🇸
@@ct6502c
>I'm in the US, and most people here regret the atomic bombing and wish we hadn't done it.
Absolute nonsense.
Since I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it brings a smile to my face every time you show the size of the blast radius over OKC :)
A smile, huh?
@@robertbouley7697 my guy must really hate life
it's really kinda crazy how nukes have only seen use in war against one single adversary for one reason and then never used again. i feel like that was such a massive turning point in human history. just the dropping of a couple big bombs. it's really hard to describe the feeling i am feeling while thinking about it.
And what pisses me off is our government(USA) has wasted BILLIONS of our hard earned tax dollars to essentially light giant fireworks because it looks cool😒
Yeah. It’s really like the world saw what they could do and said Nope.
It was an unfortunate time, but what they did to us at PH was unfortunate as well. We had to establish that this needs to end now, and we did and Atomic warfare was never used again.
We nuked Japan as a show of force because we thought we'd be the only country to possess the capabilities. Nuclear proliferation has arguably saved the world.
If everyone is afraid of nuclear annihilation, no one will use the bombs again.
Until we develop a weapon that's more destructive and world ending, the cold war limbo will last forever.
It was used once by Soviet scientists to stop a gas blowout in Uzbekistan, possibly the only good use of a nuclear warhead in history as of yet.
Retaliation is the word your thinking of. Specifically NUCLEAR retaliation.
3:50 Despite how dramatic the film was. The blast didn't do as much damage as one would suspect. The flat top next to the explosion was USS Saratoga. She was towed away and couldn't be decontaminated so she was sank. Behind her is the small ship the bomb was attached too. Behind her is Arkansas, she sank. The closer one behind her is the Japanese Nagato, After the explosion she would begin to tilt an sink. The german prinz Eugen is just out of shot, a leak formed and she sank as it was to dangerous to repair her.
I think you can also see Pennsylvania the sister ship of the Arizona.
USS Nevada was one of the oldest there and took multiple shots and she survived. She was later used as practice for the Iowa and survived. She was then torpedoes on target.
USS Laffey has a storied history, survived the blasts and continued to serve the us. You can visit her today in South Carolina.
Wasn’t Sister Sara like the largest ship at the test? Cus most of the larger ships I knew there were older dreadnoughts and Sara was 888’ along with Lady Lex, they were longest ship in the navy until the Iowas were built, but they were 887’, the last one (I think) New Jersey was 888’
Thank you.. I have wondered what happened to those ships. 😮 No one was on any of them ..correct?!
@@karendixon401 Test animals only. I was trying to cross reference the maps released by the government with the images.
"Contiguous US" not "continual US" lol
Cool video. Man, that Castle Bravo footage will never fail to impress me. Truly an atmospheric scale event.
Actually, he meant to say “continental US”.
@@tropikietis continental or contiguous or even conterminous are correct. But not continual. 🙂
And seismologists, size-MOL-o-gists, not sy-MOL-o-gists.
An interesting thing about operation fishbowl, shot Prime, is that it created temporary radiation rings around Earth and knocked out a few satellites!
It also knocked out electrical grids and phone lines in Hawaii, hundreds of miles away but in direct line of sight to the EMP.
Also, on the opposite side of the earth, the radiation rings raced across the magnetic field and a brief red aurora showed as the fallout ionized the upper atmosphere.
Definitely one of the most interesting tests.
The Johnston Island tests caused a lot of freaked-out 911 calls in Hawaii from what I know.
Starfish Prime
11:35
Love the placement of “Hazardous Environments”
The yield of the first soviet fusion bomb wasn’t big, but they improved on the transportability. The first fusion bomb they tested in US was basically a large plant with all kinds of devices to make it work.
proof-of-concept did not require portability.
Well yeah, the soviets just copied the americans each time - so they didn't need to do any of the actual breakthrough work.
Thermonuclear doesn’t just utilise fusion, it utilises fusion to boost a fission reaction and create a loop because the fission reaction increases the fusion reaction and vice versa, hence higher blast yields.
Hydrogen Bomb? Red Mercury??😢
Yeah, with the "invention" of a neutron generator to increase the fission -> fusion -> fission -> fusion -> fisson reaction even more, you have hell on earth.
Just as a side note: Having fast supercomputers and simulate the stuff also helped to not test every concept live anymore.
The footage from the town was utterly terrifying. The scale of these explosions. A reminder of the destruction they can cause.
12:38 those people were standing down below the nuke when it exploded mid air.
God knows how they even thought of volunteering for this..
U are the first comment
Great video man, I live in Philly and I was looking at the tornado path and saw that a tornado spawned literally 20 feet away from the liberty bell
“Now I’ve become death, the destroyer of worlds” Oppenheimer.
15:07 You know you're an extreme weather nerd when you use Oklahoma City as a damage reference.
Great video! What I miss are the 1962 soviet nuclear tests which included four blasts exceeding the Castle Bravo. These were, in chronogical order:
Test 147 on August 5th 1962 at 21.1 Mt
Test 173 on September 25th 1962 at 19.1 Mt
Test 174 on September 27th 1962 at 20.0 Mt
Test 219 on December 24th 1962 at 24.4 Mt
Also they were, after the Tsar Bomba the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th largest nuclear tests by yield ever conducted!
Those numbers are scary
I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. The 80s were pretty scary bro. Alot like today, you just had no idea what tomorrow would bring
Couple things:
1. It is generally agreed upon that South Africa did an atmospheric test with the "Vela Incident" in 1979.
2. I'm surprised you didn't mention the tests performed in Mississippi at the Salmon Site
3. Contiguous
Continental? Definitely not continual 😂
What's contiguous?
What's contiguous?
Also, Nu-CLEAR. Not Nu-cu-lar.
@@steverandle4700 "then there nu-cu-clur weapons..." 😂
11:00 This footage has to show the true power of one of these detonations better than any other footage i have seen
Tsar bomba nearly takes up the horizon
Really great video, im someone who has been pretty interested in Nuclear weapons and/or radioactive chemistry overall and while i did knew about most of the cases here, i have to appreciate that this video contains the exact amount of information about the nuclear testing itself while not being too long, perfect for the casual and specialized viewer, even going a little bit deeper than Peter Kuran documentaries (and keep in mind that Kuran documentaries such as Trinity and Beyond or Atomic Journeys are well known pieces about nuclear testing)
9:47 Upshot-Knothole would be of particular note for testing the precursor wave phenomenon that I talked about in your strongest winds video. Grable shot was a much lower yield than Encore but the precursor caused much more damage to drag-sensitive targets due to the sustained winds not unlike that of a tornado.
@@superskullmaster Yup, watched stuff like Scott Manley's "Going Nuclear", read up on the test operations on Wikipedia and even found some films of test operations.
Upshot Knothole -> Upshot Nuthole.
Yes I am childish.
Very well done video. The 1954 Nevada test site tests are notable because the John Wayne film The Conqueror (about Ghegis Khan) was filmed not far from the testing area. Officials told the movie people that it was safe to film there. However there was a great deal of contaminated soil from the fallout, which was stirred up by the horses, wind and vehicles. This would prove to be tragic. Of the 220 cast and crew 91 would develop some form of cancer and of those 45 succumbed.
BTW, Grable is pronounced Gray bul, named after the actress/dancer/singer Betty Grable who was a popular Pin up girl during WW2.
Also you referred to the continuous United States, I think the word you were looking for is contiguous
Wikipedia says that the "Dirty Harry" shot of Upshot-Knothole may have been the biggest contributer due to the test's extremely high fallout deposition
Guy doesn't know how to say "grey-bell" and "contiguous US". Has no business making videos.
Or "nougat" for that matter. Noo-gat. Not hard.
@@izzyarland5304 Oh really, I'd like to see your perfectly pronounced videos on the subjects Swegle has covered.
It's continental US
Your videos are the absolute best. Thank you so much for making them, they have helped me through some pretty bad anxiety attacks, including tonight. So thank you, you are appreciated. ❤.
===== Daniel 2 :44 “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever, =====
5:17 golden eye music in the back ground. the nostalgia it brings loved that game on the N64
I still maintain that nuclear weapons were one of the greatest, if not the greatest, mistakes we’ve ever made as a species.
I like to interpret this not as a "in hindsight, this was a bad move", but as "whoops, we've accidentally split an atom. Oops, we just smashed 2 together! Silly us!" 😂
I agree. Nuclear weapons are tools of mass genocide that take any honor out of war and put the world in far more danger.
Do Rats make the Traps? Dont be a foolish human, Machines are the Metal Master Race 🦾🤖☢️💀🔥🏭
I beg to differ. Same year nuclear weapons were put to use we ended probably the largest folly yet: WW2. Where 50-56 million died from conflict and an additional 20-28 million died from famine and disease. 70+ million died over a course of ~9 years (starting with Sino-Japenese war in '36) and to this day we have yet to see such barbarism. Why? Its not like society has become any less capable of militarizing itself should it come to total war. In fact, the government (at least the US) continuously plans for rapid militarization of industries that could be considered 'dual use'. That is, what is producing motors for washing machines now could be building motors for mechanized Gatling guns tomorrow should the government mandate so. All in all, we could wage a far more devastating war should nuclear weapons not make starting it moot to begin with.
No it isn’t, because of Mutually assured destruction acting as a war deterrent, more so between the big powers.
12:26 u can feel the vibration if your watching on a phone
I'm glad you chose OKC for showing nuke sizes. Really lets me get an idea of how big these things are as an Oklahoman. Seems I'd be relatively safe if the city got hit, and same with Dallas, but if they go for the ammunition plant up around McAlester I'd need to take shelter.
If you anywhere near a nuclear explosion, you're in trouble. It doesn't matter if you're affected by the blast damage or not, the radiation still can, and will kill you if you're exposed
@@Utonian21yea but no bomb in existence at the moment can reach all of Oklahoma. So he is safe
very nice pivot from the meteorological type videos. I'd be very interested on what other types of science videos you can come up with relating to quantum mechanics and maybe even physics in the future
Fun fact about Crossroads- here, at 3:43, you can see a battleship here, named the USS Nevada. Despite being close to both blasts, Able and Baker, she survived both of them, and if memory serves correct, she was the closest to Baker to actually survive. Two years later, she was towed out for target practice for the USS Iowa, one of the most advanced and well armed battleships of the time and 4 other unnamed ships, where for 5 days she was shelled and survived, before a torpedo finally finished the job. What is semi-ironic about this event is Nevada already earned the nickname of the "Unsinkable Battleship" because she was the first US warship to take a hit and survived Pearl Harbor. I'd highly recommend for anyone to check out the history of this ship, as it's very cool.
An honorable mention would have to be Project A119.
Even though it was never carried out, it was so insane it would still deserve to be mentioned, as it was when the US government went to the Air Force to ask how they should respond to the fact that the Soviets were far ahead of us at that point in the space race and it was looking like the USSR would beat the US to the moon, and the USAF's response was "let's nuke the moon and make a mushroom cloud and crater big enough to be seen on earth."
Truly the Most Civilized Solution.
18:10 fun fact….. This was possible because of the progress made in Soviet & US relations during the Rocky vs Ivan Drago tension and subsequent fight in 1985. Much progress was made during this period, paving the way for a joint venture of this magnitude. Athletics once again bringing nations together.
Very cool channel! New sub. Love the slowed down version of "Open your heart" as your theme.😉 nice programming!
Your tornado docs are great, and now this masterpiece? You're such a talented documentarian.
Great video, you did an amazing job putting these together in a neat timeline!
However, small knit pick I can't help but make a note of: The Davy Crockett is not a rocket launcher, nor is it handheld.
In the photos, you can see the tripod it was fired from, although it was intended to be, to some extent, man-portable.
The differences between a rocket launcher and a recoilless rifle can be summed up in saying that in a rocket launcher, the projectile is accelerated by a rocket that burns until its fuel runs out, but in a recoilless rifle, the propelling force comes from a single detonation, like that of a traditional firearm. The reason it's "recoilless" is the case of the propelling charge is perforated and the back of the weapon is open, allowing some of the gasses to vent out the back and, in theory, giving an equal and opposite reaction to the recoil force generated by the firing of the warhead/payload.
The propellant is never detonated, at least not on purpose. The combustion in the rifle may be much faster but it is still subsonic. Supersonic detonation would destroy the launcher or rifle
@@shanent5793 Deflagration may be the technically correct term, but detonation will be more readily understood, so I went with the colloquialism.
@@Radium_Alarie it's fine but I figured while we're nitpicking anyways!
@@shanent5793 That's fair, I only object because, in my case, it was a deliberate choice of words
@3:45 there's cameras views out there shot in slow motion where(if viewed at a slow enough speed)you can literally watch that ship lift,bow,break,melt,and then evaporate.
12:07 I have had too many dreams just like this
This was just as well done as your meteorological videos! If you wanted to keep branching out, I think you’d be a great edition to Science YT ☺️
Ill second that
I'll third that
I honestly believe the Ivy Mike Shot you labelled as first British in the thumbnail is one of the coolest photos of a mushroom cloud ever taken 👌
Watched the film today. Long and complex narrative, but incredible acting and camera work!
Just noticed the Half-Life music in the background 12:16. Good choice especially with the context lol
Humanity has so much potential and yet it’s heading towards such a dark and tragic direction. Imagine how many real problems can be solved how many lives can be improved and saved just by the funding alone they spent on atomic weapons
I can't believe you forgot the worst bomb. The pies. They aren't pies. They were made in a factory. A bomb factory. They're bombs.
Just a little baby NUCLEAR BOMB 15:48
Awesome video man it was very interesting and the way you presented things was great 👍🏻
Really happy to see someone else highlight the British nuclear program during the 50s. The nuclear testing history conversation is absolutely dominated by the American and Soviet operations. Rarely is the spotlight on Hurricane, Totem, or even Grapple, despite these test series being equally as fascinating as the heavyweights like Castle or Joe-111. The same goes for the French and Chinese.
For sure. My great uncle was fleet air arm. He was present at one of the British nuclear tests. Died a couple of years ago, never got to ask him more sadly
Silly ah names
yes so cool, nukes baby, let's blast that shit until we all die. Why is everyone in this comment section so thrilled and chill about this subject.. This shit is horrible
Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by venomous snakes or big cats? Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by tornadoes or volcanic eruptions? Perhaps it's the same reason people are fascinated by black holes or supernovae? No one is denying that nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are dangerous, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone here that would support their use in war, or hell even in another test. However, just as with all dangerous phenomena, a nuclear detonation is an incredibly sobering sight and carries with it an intrinsic beauty in its visual appearance, scale, and raw energy release.
Even without that, merely from a physical engineering perspective, the individual devices are feats of their own and have a history ripe for studying. Reading through the methods in which engineers and physicists overcame hurdles, like going from the liquid deuterium TX-16 for Ivy Mike to combining deuterium and lithium for the solid TX-21 for Castle bravo to reduce weight, is just a fascinating experience. Is it so hard to understand, then, why people may find nuclear weapons history just a little interesting? I mean shit, some people even have PhDs in it.
@@RojoFern And do you think testing nukes here on earth for 70 years like pathetic little kids blowing up shit hasn't affected the conditions at all and won't affect us in the future? Even in this video the guy says "oh, and this test killed 3 people". Nearly every test was controversial and not only for science's sake. Fuck that science and engineering if it means our end. Putin is close to losing his war in Ukraine, what do you think happens next? We should've never got this power.. we don't deserve it.
Top 3 Nuclear Bunkers:
#3: Nuclear Bunker
#2: Space Station
#1: 15 Year Old Table
US: “surrender now”
Japan: “suck on deez”
US: *drops the sun and hundreds of thousands perish instantly*
Japan: “understandable, I now wish to surrender”
Yesss. I’ve been obsessed with videos on nuclear bombs and the Manhattan project since watching Oppenheimer last week. Great movie by the way.
Just to put this out there, thermonuclear weapons weren’t ridiculously more powerful because of the fusion. As they were designed the fusion reaction caused fast fissioning in the uranium parts that normally don’t fission. So think of a typical thermonuclear weapon as fission-fusion-fission. In theory of course you can add as much fusion fuel as you want for that stage and make a bomb the size of a aircraft carrier.
Right at the end of atmospheric testing, US scientists developed a revolutionary new kind of ultra-high yield thermonuclear device called Ripple. It didn't use the fission third stage and was very clean. Beyond that, the yield-to-weight ratio was predicted to be much higher than conventional thermonuclear weapons. In the Housatonic test that was almost 10 megatons, over 99% of the energy was from fusion and therefore "clean". Because of the end of atmospheric testing and the lack of need for super high yield warheads, the weapon design was never put into production.
@@FlintIronstag23would that mean that it produced less radiation?
@@bella_ciao4608 Yes, it was extremely clean since almost all the energy came from fusion and not fission. It's fission that causes the vast majority of radioactive fallout.
I didn’t know that. I knew boosted fission bombs are just atom bombs that use a variety anabolics. That’s as far as my bomb knowledge goes.
@@bella_ciao4608less fallout, or debris to be irradiated and capable of spreading the radiation
So what yield would be used in a nuclear war today? Bigger or smaller than tsar bomba?
7:46 it's interesting that it took us this long to get our first nuke when we started the research that led to the nuclear bomb and the seppos kept it from us despite it being a collaborative effort.
13:33 “1958 let’s blow shit up together”
Nice😂
14:29 Operation "Your my boy, Blue!!!" LMAO. Great video dude.
Ahh, I see that the interest overlap between tornadoes and nukes isn't only in my brain 😆 big, superlatively powerful, scary things. Thanks for another great video!
You forgot to mention that Castle-Bravo was accidentally 15 megatons 😂 that's the worst part of it. Honestly, Castle-Bravo is the craziest one and the most terrifying to me. Watching that explosion is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Them boys was just blowing shit up 😂
“You see that Roscoe?”
“Hell yea brother”
4:31 the front of the bomb reminds something..
Say it
@@bryanvera7658nazi.
What was it?
Nazi Germ-
Nazi Germ-
3:29
You can see the ships just turn into dust
A plumbbob is a tool you use to measure if something is "plumb" or not. Its kinda like leveling but for verticality.
7:39 "IF YOU WOULDN'T TELL *STALIN* _DON'T TELL_ *ANYONE* "😂
0:20 when my boss comes looking for me when I’ve been doing nothing but watching UA-cam all day
Its the ones that turn the entire sky orange that instill the most fear in me.
UAP top left corner at minute 3:03? :)
For anyone interested in the yield of Little Feller 1, the smallest nuclear bomb, a brief excerpt from Wikipedia:
"In Little Feller I (July 17), the warhead was launched as a Davy Crockett device from a stationary 155 millimeter launcher and set to detonate between 20-40 feet (6.1-12.2 m) above the ground around 1.7 miles (2.7 km) from the launch point, with a yield of 18 tons of TNT (75 GJ)"
The smallest nuclear bomb tested was one by Ted Taylor. It was too small and didn't go off. It was called the Puny Plutonium Bomb, or "P.P. Shot." After the failed test, Enrico Fermi told Ted Taylor, “Now you’re making progress.” “You’ve fired a dud.”
the davy crockett also isnt a handheld
@@buckhorncortezPetite plutonium.
Thanks for the video! Great editing, incredible work man
15:38 handheld atomic rocket launcher?!?!😳
they needa give me that shit
What the hell man
Leave it to America
If I saw this during my atomic bomb phase I think I would be kicking and squealing right now lol. I was super fascinated by them in 2019
“atomic bomb phase”
We all have one of those phases. or is that just my cold blooded American blood?
I keep thinking that I am done with Nuclear videos.... But presentation s like this just keep pulling me back in. 😄
It was Operation Starfish Prime not Starship prime my friend. Awesome video by the way! I got more information here than any other documentary or tv show. Keep up the good work! 👍🏽
seeing the heavens themselves part from the power of nuclear hell is terrifying yet awe inspiring. one can only guess how the soldiers present felt.
One said in an interview not that long ago that he and a bunch of other troops were taking cover from the blast in a trench which had been dug out only a few hundreds of yards from ground zero. They were instructed to close their eyes and put their hands or arms in front of their faces as well, in order to try and block out all light.
Detonation occurred, and he recalled that despite having his eyes closed, wearing protective goggles and covering his face with his hands, his vision was filled with light at that moment. He said he experienced something truly unreal: with eyes closed he could make out perfectly the bones in each hand. Apparently the troops were in close enough proximity to the bomb that they were briefly flooded with x-rays.
What a crazy thing to experience first hand..
@@SineEyed Sounds absolutely mind boggling. Words surely cannot make justice to that kind of feeling...
@@SineEyeddid those troops have any troubles with radiation poisoning after the testing? I mean their bodies were flooded by x rays it’d make sense if they had some sort of radiation poisoning
@@Z5-XB radiation wasn't the only thing those poor bastards had to contend with... 😵
ua-cam.com/video/qbBu6cWczTY/v-deo.html
Just the steam intro sound effect at 11:36 lol
Yeah I knew I heard it
It’s the valve intro
One story worth mentioning is about how India conducted it's nuclear tests in 1990s, even under heavy US sanctions and heavy CIA surveillance.
This is an extraordinary story because at that time India had fooled both USA and it's ally Pakistan. The test was also unexpected to Russia, China & UK.
Thanks for an awesome rundown of the history! I think the word you're looking for when referring to the lower 48 is contiguous, not continual.
Great Video. Oppenheimer has definitely sparked a ton of new interest in these programs, happy to see cool new videos coming out
you ain't slick i heard the valve intro in this vid also good vid i like it def earned my sub
Where did the truck go...? @ 11:09!???
Those videos were staged by the United States
Who is watching this after Oppenheimer?
13:20 Song in the background: The Planets - Gostav Holst (Mars)
Correction in 14:49 Tsar Bomba was NOT an "Atomic Bomb". It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb.
3:19 this may not seem significant until it is pointed out here, but this footage actually holds a lot of weight as evidence for the structure of water having an effect on the it's overall interaction profile with Electromagnetic Radiation, specifically the spectrum of it's transparency/opacity.
In this segment of video taken of the Baker test, you will notice that the ocean changes turning black around the detonation site where the water has just come in contact with the compression wave. This denotes the shift in the EM interaction profile as the structure of the water is placed under intense compression. This shift briefly makes the water appear opaque and black, as in this compressed state, higher frequencies of light are being obstructed.
This is important because it basically provides video evidence that water (when uncompressed) is opaque in the infra-red and microwave spectrum. This in turn means that water absorbs and re-emits light at those same microwave and infra-red spectrum frequencies, which in turn falsifies any assumptions or theories about the structure of the Universe that are made using Microwave Background Radiation readings taken from ground based observatories as the water content of the atmosphere and the presence of the ocean itself serves to obscure and contaminate the information gathered by the instruments.
Do with this information what you will. Just note that this same compression effect on the water can be observed in every underwater nuclear test.
Fun fact (or not so fun): the fireball that an atomic bomb creates is hotter than the sun and vaporizes ANYTHING inside, diamonds, titanium, steel, whatever.
5:03 i like how you have this powerful weapon capable of destroying countless lives and the americans decided to call it Joe